


FIC: In The Tomb Of Capulet

by deslea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark, Dystopia, F/M, Fic, Suicide, Voldemort!Wins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 19:45:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1197147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deslea/pseuds/deslea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when the man who wants everything, has everything?</p>
            </blockquote>





	FIC: In The Tomb Of Capulet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hogwartsvixxxen](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=hogwartsvixxxen).



Every war is won, at last.

He thinks this as he draws his victory from her, draws it in rasping cries and in deep, shuddering breaths. It is not the first climax he has drawn from her, but it is the one where she is brought utterly undone, all awareness of herself and her separateness from him driven far, far away.

He has lived for this moment. Lived for it ever since his other great war was won.

He understood, after a fashion, Bella's fidelity to her husband in life; she was an idealist and a zealot. Adultery, even with _him_ , her love and her Lord, was beneath her. She had steadfastly refused him for decades - she, who could refuse him nothing.

More than once, he had considered taking her by force, if only to purge his obsession with her and put her behind him, but he understood somehow that this would not have the desired effect. It was not only her body he craved, but her yielding, too. He didn't _want_ to control her. He wanted her gift of herself, freely given. And it was forever out of reach.

He had thought Rodolphus' death would put an end to her resistance, and in the final battle, when victory was finally in his grasp, he placed Rodolphus in the line of fire. As one war was won, so would be the other.

But it hadn't happened that way. She had been filled with guilt ( _guilt!_ Bella, who merrily committed nine atrocities before breakfast!) and refused to see him, or anyone else, either. Indeed, for the first three years of their new world, she emerged only for matters of state and for official occasions. She allowed him to name her his queen, but in retrospect that had been a mistake. It had only made her guilt worse.

It was five years before he really understood. It took that long to fully penetrate the fog of guilt that enveloped her mind. It was he, and he alone that she resisted, precisely because she had loved him while her husband lived. To yield to him was to be unfaithful, even now.

That had been the turning point. He had seduced her gently, with fairytales of a husband who knew her heart all along. Who begged their Lord to look after her and make her happy when he was gone. He showed her fanciful memories in the Pensieve. Regaled her with quotes that turned her own, piercing inner thoughts and made them gentle and kind. Tenderly, relentlessly, he broke down her walls until they crumbled in floods of tears, and soothed her with assurances of love of the two men who had made up her world. He comforted her with gentle hands and softly probing lips until her own tormented passions spilled over.

And now it is complete. 

_He_ is complete.

It dawns on him, holding her afterwards, that there is nothing left for him. Nothing left to do, nothing left to win. The world is as it should be and will carry on after him. He has attained the perfection he has spent his life in search of. His world is perfect and his life is perfect and all that awaits him, stretched out before him, is century after endless century with nothing more to win.

It strikes him forcibly that this is what death is for. That it is for completion. It seemed wrong to him before because his mother _wasn't_ complete.

But he is. He is.

He doesn't question the impulse. Simply calls Nagini to him, his other self, and Nagini comes. She knows what he will do, but she comes anyway. Watches him unblinkingly as he slashes her throat with a silent spell. Watches with her dying breaths as he slashes his own.

Bella wakes as he is fading away. Screams.

He wonders, for a moment, whether she will follow him. She has followed him everywhere in life, into danger, into the hands of enemies, into a fate worse than death. And she doesn't fear death, he knows.

But she fears for the ones they will leave behind. She fears for the fledgling world they have built together.

He sees her, with his failing vision, grappling with it. Fingers twitching towards his wand.

They settle. In this, she will let him walk alone.

Very well, he thinks. She has already yielded where it mattered.

They come running in, Lucius and Yaxley and Scabior, and it occurs to him belatedly that they will accuse her. No matter. Veritaserum, her memories, and his own wand will clear her. But just to be sure, he points his finger and writes in child's, straggling letters in the air:

_Long live the queen._

END

**Author's Note:**

> For hogwartsvixxxen and My Bloody Valentine 2014 on hp_darkarts. The prompt was "She's always obeyed her Dark Lord except when it came to sex, she remained faithful to Rodolphus. [Rodolphus] having died in the war, Bellatrix has no one to remain faithful to except herself and her pride. I'd love you forever if you use all sorts of nasty kinky toys, the more the better with hard core BDSM. Question: Will Bellatrix finally submit or since Voldemort can't have her surrender he takes her life." This went a bit off-script - sorry about that!
> 
> The Tomb Of Capulet is where Romeo killed himself, believing his and Juliet's story was at its end, and Juliet took her own life in turn. I very nearly killed Bella, too - hence the title. I did, and do, question whether this Bella would ever take her own life, but she was in the middle of an inner cataclysm when Voldemort died. I thought it at least possible that she would, in her temporarily-demolished state. But I decided that her idealism would win out.
> 
> I don't see Voldemort committing a strictly emotionally-driven suicide, but I can see him self-destructing, either deliberately or recklessly, driven by an irrational belief that winning everything = nothing left (especially if, in his arrogance, he decided he had achieved perfection so there was nowhere left to go). There is a high suicide rate associated with psychopathy/sociopathy, as well as extreme recklessness. And of course, he has cottoned onto a warped version of truth here - that death is a form of completion. I also think that the truly great have a deep longing for rest, if only their work was done (which never is the case, since there's always more to do to improve the world). And as Ollivander observed, Voldemort _was_ great - terrible, but great.


End file.
